The human touch
Some schools in the language travel industry have been going through genuine hard times in recent months as economic hardship, coupled with unhelpful immigration decisions have taken their toll. A local London paper reports that one language school in the city is down by UK£80,000 (US$119,814) in lost business due to government restriction on student visa holders earlier in the year.

The recent Judicial Review against the Home Office by English UK has seen these restrictions lifted but they are still to be debated in Parliament and could well be brought in again in the future. And the decision may come too late to reverse the damage done to the UK’s important summer season. English UK values the UK English teaching sector as adding £1.5 billion (US$2.2 billion) to the UK economy so this could be an expensive mistake for the government.

Australia too has seen a number of vocational colleges and language schools close down in recent months due in part to immigration decisions that have restricted immigration pathways for international students and raised the bar when it comes to students having the funds to support themselves while staying in the country.

In times like these, customer service and presenting a human face when doing business becomes even more important. Our Special Report feature this month focuses on the experiences of students when using an agent to book their language course. Interestingly, despite the dominance of the Internet in most people’s lives, the largest group of students said that they did not find their agent online but instead used the recommendations of friends. A high number also had a face-to-face meeting with their agent when booking their course and many also said that they valued continued contact from the agent when overseas.

Despite living in a digital age were anonymity is more often the norm, students, schools and agents all attest to the value of personal contacts when doing business. Our workshops feature supports this view as the workshop industry goes from strength to strength with new events springing up around the world. The formation of a sector-wide consortium of education associations in Canada also points to the importance of joined-up thinking and working together when times get hard. Canada’s international education industry appears to be doing well in the current economic climate and a unified voice for the entire industry can only consolidate this.